Look, you have been whining about this on dozens of threads since you became a forum member…we get it. Man up and deal with it or do us all a favor and take your TiVo back for a refund and take up some other pastime.

Amen Richsadams. The last person I wanted hijacking my thread is TokyoShoe. I have been reading nothing but way overboard complaints from him for the past week.

Actually I think this is complete and total garbage. It is "Early Adopters" that went out and bought eSATA Drives to use with their TivoHD units in anticipation of being able to use them, just as they were useable with the Tivo Series3's. While I think they are smart not to disable all non-verified drives for previous Series 3 users, I think it's complete and total CRAP much less massively missleading advertising to sell off TivoHD's with an eSATA port .. but NOT tell the users you intend to lock it down and have it behave TOTALLY differently from previous generation Series 3's and their eSATA port.

People bought TivoHD's with eSATA ports specifically to be able to upgrade them the same way people could with their Tivo Series 3's. Yes, I understand that was a "backdoor solution" regarding eSATA use and the Series 3's. But guess what? You NEVER commented on it being an "illegal solution" previously, and since no comments to this fact were ever made.. nor were there EVER comments regarding TivoHD requiring a "Verified Storage Solution" in the future. I personally think this is flat out dirty pool on the part of Tivo and I am losing respect for this company FAST.

I've stayed silent on this issue, but come on, man. You bought the TivoHD and then tried to use a backdoor solution. It didn't work. Until launching the expander, Tivo NEVER advertised it as a working feature on the Tivo HD with any eSATA drive, nor did they even allude to it as being something they would support. You, like all of us, frequent a site filled with early adopters who like to "hack" their equipment. You jumped too early, which is your fault, not Tivos. I've been caught doing the same thing with other techs and had to bite the bullet. I almost bought an antec external case a couple of weeks ago when they were on sale, but opted not to because a lot of speculation was pointing towards Tivo only supporting verified drives. You've got to suck it up here; constant bellyaching is only going to give you an ulcer.

Tivo has made a business decision, which is probably a sound decision given the market that the Tivo HD targets.

TivoPony, thanks for the honest response. Based on all of my interactions with Tivo over the years, I have found them to be one of the most consumer-oriented companies around.

So I wonder if it's possible to extract the 500GB drive and copy it to a 1TB drive and have it work properly.

That would be interesting to find out. It has to be the firmware description in the drive that is being keyed off of for the p'n'p installation, not the enclosure nor any content on the drive. But once setup will it check the drive each time or not? Someone with the TiVo specified drive and another different drive gets to test (it doesn't need to be a bigger one for the purposes of proof of concept).

Well, what if I doubled the SD recording capacity for you? How about up to 600 hours of SD capacity instead of 300?

Poof! Done.

The quoted '300 hours' is for the Scientific Atlanta DVR, not for a TiVo DVR. The HD numbers are the same, but a TiVo DVR can record up to 600 additional hours of SD content using the My DVR Expander.

Cheers,
Pony

Well, yeah, but who wants to put 600 hours of SD programming on an HD DVR, and basic quality at that? I have 2 TB on one Series III and 1TB on the other. If I had only SD programming, I could get over 2000 hours of basic quality SD on them. Outside of TiVo Suggestions I have maybe 20 hours of SD content stored in total between the two of them.

I just flashed on something. Does anyone recall what the recording capacity of the very first production Series I TiVo was?

The backdoor that allowed any eSATA drive to work with the Series3 was not intended for public consumption.

Oops.

Frankly, I think the mileage TiVo received or could have received if they bothered so to do from having widely distributed unpaid beta testers in the form of eager hackers could have far exceeded any negative impacts to your marketing and development strategy. To put it another way, If I were you, I would have quietly and unofficially but publicly and deliberately put the utility in front of the users for them to try at their own risk.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TiVoPony

Once it got out though, there was little we could do short of disabling all the drives the community had already purchased and installed.

Not at all. As one other poster already pointed out, disabling the marriage code will not prevent already married drives from working. Indeed, those of us with other than stock drives already make use of different utilities than the TiVo stock marriage utility.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TiVoPony

We will not provide any support however for non-verified drives, or any issues that arise from having used one.

Which is perfectly reasonable, and would be even if events had unfolded differently.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TiVoPony

There wasn't a backdoor for the TiVo HD platform, nor will there be one.

I should imagine not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TiVoPony

The TiVo Verified solutions are the way to go with a TiVo HD. I'd recommend it for the Series3 as well!

It's difficult to judge inflection in this type of forum, so I may well be misreading between the lines. Forgive me and correct me if I am, but there is a huge difference between providing a Supported Items list while refusing to supply support for items not on the list and actively preventing a product from functioning in an unsupported fashion or with unsupported third party equipment. It almost sounds like and seems like TiVo is leaning toward the latter. If so, and again I could easily be way off base, I feel compelled to remark that this is a very poor marketing gambit.

Think about it for a moment. If you purchased a Ferrari and they recommended only a limited number of brand of tires be used, refusing to repair under warranty any damages caused by the use of unapproved tires, you would probably not object - but would probably buy whatever tires you wanted despite the company line. If they put a gizmo in the car which prevented it from starting when you installed tires from Bob's tire shop, however, you would raise bloody Hell.

How far would Compaq or Dell get if they prevented their PCs from working with the majority of hard drives on the market? The TiVo isn't really substanitally different from the PC on my desk from a peripherals perspective. (Of course in the event TiVo winds up with a list of approved drives a mile long, the point becomes rather moot.)

Better yet, what would TiVo say if either a major television manufacturer or one of the major CATV providers came up with a way to prevent the TV from working if a TiVo is attached?

I've stayed silent on this issue, but come on, man. You bought the TivoHD and then tried to use a backdoor solution. It didn't work. Until launching the expander, Tivo NEVER advertised it as a working feature on the Tivo HD with any eSATA drive, nor did they even allude to it as being something they would support. You, like all of us, frequent a site filled with early adopters who like to "hack" their equipment. You jumped too early, which is your fault, not Tivos. I've been caught doing the same thing with other techs and had to bite the bullet. I almost bought an antec external case a couple of weeks ago when they were on sale, but opted not to because a lot of speculation was pointing towards Tivo only supporting verified drives. You've got to suck it up here; constant bellyaching is only going to give you an ulcer.

Tivo has made a business decision, which is probably a sound decision given the market that the Tivo HD targets.

TivoPony, thanks for the honest response. Based on all of my interactions with Tivo over the years, I have found them to be one of the most consumer-oriented companies around.

A thought: if it is the drive, and not the enclosure, that identifies the "My DVR Expander" as the TiVo-verified solution, then isn't it possible to buy two of those drives (sans enclosure), and put them into a single eSATA enclosure for a full 1 TB expansion? (For example, this enclosure: http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?id=613875 and a couple of 500 GB drives from DVR Expanders.)

A thought: if it is the drive, and not the enclosure, that identifies the "My DVR Expander" as the TiVo-verified solution, then isn't it possible to buy two of those drives (sans enclosure), and put them into a single eSATA enclosure for a full 1 TB expansion? (For example, this enclosure: http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?id=613875 and a couple of 500 GB drives from DVR Expanders.)

The device your link points to doesn't have eSATA, you can only connect to the host via USB or firewire. Any enclosure that bind together two drives to look as one is going to its own firmware to handle the host interface and not look like the constituent drives.

Well, yeah, but who wants to put 600 hours of SD programming on an HD DVR, and basic quality at that?

I was going to post something similar. Touting the 600 hours of basic quality SD programming storage is ridiculous and borders on insulting. People don't buy S3 units to store SD programming on them, and even if they did nobody would be satisfied with basic quality on an HD display (unless you were just after the audio, or were using it as a surveillance system or something like that.)

FYI, many of us began modifying S3's more than six months ago, not THD’s (which didn’t exist at the time). Whatever you are, you are not an “early adopter”.

Look, you have been whining about this on dozens of threads since you became a forum member…we get it. Man up and deal with it or do us all a favor and take your TiVo back for a refund and take up some other pastime.

I've been a member of forum for more than few months now, and I've been posting on one thing or another on and off. (I tried to get Galleon to work for a bit before anyone actually mentioned point blank that TTG/MRV was enabled for TivoHD's. My bad, wasted a bit of time on that.

My "early adopter" point is not in comparison to the rest of the Tivo Nation, you can't use S3's as direct timeline comparisons to TivoHD. Features comparisons, sure... even quality comparisons or speed/functionality comparisons.

Maybe I should rephrase that as "TivoHD Early Adopter"? In terms of "TivoHD Early Adopter" it's going to be anyone who bought the TivoHD units very early on, and prepared for future use and possible expansion as quick as they could. Since they were "TivoHD Early Adopters" the only nearest benchmark for functionality would be the rest of the Series3's. We check with the Series3 users, see that they have eSATA capabilities that are enabled via an "undocumented functionality". Now, extensive research regarding all documentation, as well as any "official positions" from Tivo on this "undocumented functionality" never yields comments from Tivo stating said "undocumented functionality" is infact an "illegal move on the part of the users". They just don't say anything about it.

If they leave a function in, documented or not, and never patch it out for SUCH a long duration of time.. the user community is going to make assumptions regarding that functionality and just what future intent or possibilities are. This is going to especially happen a lot with PR policies like they have at Tivo.. not commenting on so many thinks, never listing specific patch notes or future intentions of features development.

S3's had eSATA that was could be enabled through "some means". A means left in for quite a long time, never condemned by Tivo.. just never ENDORSED by Tivo. If a new consumer comes into this equation and does what research he can, he's going to end up making the assumption that this feature is going to be left in for the S3's long term. Comparing equipment on the regular S3 to the TivoHD, and factoring in that the TivoHD is in fact a S3-"lite" type model, AND the fact that TivoHD has an eSATA also. Combine all this, it's very easy to come to the conclusion that this feature will eventually be just as functional with TivoHD's.

Heck I was told numerous times by folks on THESE forums that the eSATA port was going to get enabled on TivoHD's when TTG/MRV got enabled, because the features were all tied together. (Yes these people are NOT "official Tivo employees / support", I get that and am not trying to BLAME them for anything.)

And yes I'm griping about the massively bad choice regarding this entire stupidity of. Yes I'm a tad "miffed" regarding having purchased a TivoHD AND an external eSATA drive, having been told by forum members here specific feature expectations.. and then have Tivo Inc. turn around that totally change the functionality of those features AGAINST what I was previously told. Yes I am a "bit upset" regarding the requirements of having to buy a NEW eSATA drive of their "specific brand".

But here's the final point.. the final gist of this entire monstrosity of a rambling post.

If you're sick of me.. just ignore me? It's what everyone else does, seems to work for them just fine too. Even better, let me cuss and whine until I get myself banned from the boards! Then you are rid of me! Just remember yours is not the only perspective or opinion here. Yours is not the "right way to see things". And you don't actually own OR run these boards.

If you are mad that your drive isn't supported, plug it into a computer and tivotogo it and it will work just fine.

You knew this feature wasn't going to be supported until November, so you really should have planned ahead and returned your Tivo and re-bought it so you could test out its functionality to your liking.

If you bought your Tivo and HDD with some sort of documentation saying they would officially work, and it did not, then you have a fair complaint.

We aren't out to get you, many of us have been waiting excitedly for these features for a long time, but you just need to tone it down a bit. Tivo didn't sell you the wrong items, not did the tivocommunitystore for that matter.

If you are mad that your drive isn't supported, plug it into a computer and tivotogo it and it will work just fine.

You knew this feature wasn't going to be supported until November, so you really should have planned ahead and returned your Tivo and re-bought it so you could test out its functionality to your liking.

If you bought your Tivo and HDD with some sort of documentation saying they would officially work, and it did not, then you have a fair complaint.

We aren't out to get you, many of us have been waiting excitedly for these features for a long time, but you just need to tone it down a bit. Tivo didn't sell you the wrong items, not did the tivocommunitystore for that matter.

Trust me, I get it. I bought the TivoHD, the documentation mentions the eSATA port "intended for future use", thought it doesn't implicitly state what / when / where / why / how. Instead I read up, get suggestions from this community that I then have to make the choice to act upon. Was it a mistake not to return the TivoHD at the end of the first thirty days? Might have been, yes. Right now, I think I would pin the bigger misplacement of faith in the choice to purchase an eSATA drive before getting the final "official word" from Tivo (that went against almost everyone's expectations, I'd wager).

I still think it's okay to be frustrated with Tivo, tho, when they roll out a feature that flys against customer expectations. I still don't see why they don't just enable the "unsupported eSATA device" setup for TivoHD's, just like they did for Series 3's. Yes I get that it's grandfathered, but they state that they grandfathered in Series 3's specifically to avoid riots.

Don't you think that would mean that the TivoHD users might riot ALSO for not getting that same loophole capability? I really don't see any logic reason for NOT enabling unsupported eSATA device bonding, especially since they... (wait for it)...don't have to support the unsupported?

A thought: if it is the drive, and not the enclosure, that identifies the "My DVR Expander" as the TiVo-verified solution, then isn't it possible to buy two of those drives (sans enclosure), and put them into a single eSATA enclosure for a full 1 TB expansion? (For example, this enclosure: http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?id=613875 and a couple of 500 GB drives from DVR Expanders.)

Steve

Um...because you can buy a single 1TB HDD and install it internally for less? Just a thought.

What kind of support are people looking for anyway? I mean if you use the TiVo DVR Expander and it fails, what is TiVo going to do for you besides keep you on hold when you call? Nothing in the world will get your recordings back. If the drive(s) are under warranty, that's the same deal as if Joe's Bargain HDD dies under warranty.

I'm not talking here about the convenience of PnP. That I understand a desire for.

But in terms of support, what practical help or restitution can be expected if something goes wrong? Who's going to prove your motherboard blew because of a faulty DVR Expander, for example? For that matter, how long is the warranty period anyway?

I still don't get the fascination of HUGE drives attached to Tivo. Keeping a bunch of stuff on there clutters things up (Tivo has very limited organizing capabilities) and slows down the software doesn't it (can't imagine bringing up Now Playing List with 100s of shows)? If you build up a whole bunch of stuff to watch later then when will you ever get time to watch it? For me there's stuff to watch on TV pretty much year round so there's never dead time for me where I can catch up on old stuff. Now with the ability for many to offload programs to PCs I see even less urgency for bigger drives on the Tivos. I can see getting up to around 500GB or so but even adding 500GB to my existing 250GB internal would be way overkill for me especially since I already have 2 S3s to share the load. If you want to save a whole series then isn't it more convenient to store on a PC to have the ability to easily organize things as you want? Or just get the DVD set?
So what's the main motivation for HUGE drives on 1 Tivo? Is it a pack rat thing? A man thing? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it's crazy to be doing it, I'm just trying to understand the reasoning behind it - I feel like I'm missing something here and left out of the party.

What kind of support are people looking for anyway? I mean if you use the TiVo DVR Expander and it fails, what is TiVo going to do for you besides keep you on hold when you call? Nothing in the world will get your recordings back. If the drive(s) are under warranty, that's the same deal as if Joe's Bargain HDD dies under warranty.

I'm not talking here about the convenience of PnP. That I understand a desire for.

But in terms of support, what practical help or restitution can be expected if something goes wrong? Who's going to prove your motherboard blew because of a faulty DVR Expander, for example? For that matter, how long is the warranty period anyway?

I still don't get the fascination of HUGE drives attached to Tivo. Keeping a bunch of stuff on there clutters things up (Tivo has very limited organizing capabilities) and slows down the software doesn't it (can't imagine bringing up Now Playing List with 100s of show)? If you build up a whole bunch of stuff to watch later then when will you ever get time to watch it? For me there's stuff to watch on TV pretty much year round so there's never dead time for me where I can catch up on old stuff. Now with the ability for many to offload programs to PCs I see even less urgency for bigger drives on the Tivos. I can see getting up to around 500GB or so but even adding 500GB to my existing 250GB internal would be way overkill for me especially since I already have 2 S3s to share the load. If you want to save a whole series then isn't it more convenient to store on a PC or have the ability to easily organize things as you want? Or just get the DVD set?
So what's the main motivation for HUGE drives on 1 Tivo? Is it a pack rat thing? A man thing? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it's crazy to be doing it, I'm just trying to understand the reasoning behind it - I feel like I'm missing something here and left out of the party.

Good question, but there's a little Tim the Tool Man Taylor in every one of us me thinks. We have about 150 shows saved up on our S3 and the menus are as speedy as ever...just takes forever to scroll through them all.

As for me, I was waiting for TTG. Now a bunch of the shows will be moving off of TiVo and onto the PC, or DVD, etc. As soon as that bit of housekeeping is done I'm permanently removing the eSATA and popping in the 1TB internal drive I have here on my desk. I’ll drop the 500GB drive from the eSATA into our new TiVo HD and be done with it. That's enough real estate for us...for now anyway.

Just because you can't imagine "hundreds of shows" doesn't mean others can't. Some of us have better imaginations.

One of the reasons I want a lot of space is so I can have a choice when I do want to watch. I want to pick what I feel like watching, not the limited choices faced because I can only store a few hours of shows.

Regarding the complainers about complaining: You don't have to "drink the kool-aide" to use/like a TivoHD. It is perfectly valid to have issues with the way Tivo has handled things. Any business today had better face up to the mass market of consumers and not just those consumers to whom it can do no wrong. Without good feedback from consumers Tivo will go bust, because it will no longer be meeting market demand.

Even negative feedback should be widely sought to make the company's products more palatable to the public. Complaining about dissent is more likely to be harmful to the company as it can shut off valid concerns and limit their ability to get back to the main company.

There are two reasons that come to mind for me. First, it extends the TiVo mentality of never needing to watch live TV (save for live breaking news) even further. At any particular time I can have a weeks worth of movies available to suit whatever mood I might be in. I may not watch every one. I may start to watch one and realize I'm not interested but I have that option. It is like having a virtual video on demand system. It is particularly good for new season premieres of new shows. Just record everything and then decide at your leisure what might be true season pass material.

And finally, there are certain shows that can be considered exemplary from an HD standpoint. Demonstration pieces if you will or things I like watching repeatedly like Planet Earth or Travels to the Edge . Anyone with a large collection of CDs or DVDs knows the inclination. It is nice to have excess space for such archives so that the more temporal regular use is not interefered with.

The good thing about having the expansion option is that then each person can decide how useful the extra space would be to their viewing habits rather than being limited to the 250GB or less stock drive. Even a casual TV fan could very easily come up against hard limits with a stock TiVo HD. It is just a matter of degree. For some there is even a little bit of because it can be done motivation.

Previous to purchasing a TivoHD (and dropping DirectTv), I had a DirectTv HR10-250 with the internal drive upgraded to 750MB. My wife and I were always running out of space... Why?

During the fall season, we'd record (in HD, of course) many different shows we had "less" interest in and just let them build up throughout the season. When the summer repeats season came, we still had the entire season of 3-4 shows to watch....

I have children. 2 and 4. I have every single episode of dozens and dozens of childrens shows. I actually have more season passes for children's shows than I do of adult shows. They build up fast...

We also have about 2 dozen various movies and other specials recorded. HD quality (even DTV's HD-Lite) is better than plain DVD (and I'm waiting for the industry to choose between HD-DVD or BlueRay before I invest in a new player.)

My wife watches tons of various shows in the daytime that I have no part of. Things on HGTV, Lifetime, Oxygen, DIY, etc. I'm not sure what they are... only that they take up a few pages on the NPL.

If you think the NPL can get slow now, you should have tried it before TiVo put in folders!

I think that the point is that TiVo started as (and still is for many) a way to timeshift and to record 1-2 shows to watch later the same day or week. For others, it's become a video library.

Easy: Multiple viewers. My wife and I don't always watch the same shows, and we have three kids that also watch different stuff. So we could have 5 TiVos with medium-sized drives on them, or 1 TiVo with a HUGE drive on it. Problem solved.

What kind of support are people looking for anyway? I mean if you use the TiVo DVR Expander and it fails, what is TiVo going to do for you besides keep you on hold when you call? Nothing in the world will get your recordings back. If the drive(s) are under warranty, that's the same deal as if Joe's Bargain HDD dies under warranty.

I'm not talking here about the convenience of PnP. That I understand a desire for.

But in terms of support, what practical help or restitution can be expected if something goes wrong? Who's going to prove your motherboard blew because of a faulty DVR Expander, for example? For that matter, how long is the warranty period anyway?

Well, this is just a guess mostly, but maybe they're equating PnP ability to support... shot in the dark.